10 Sure Ways to Spot When Someone Is Lying

Let’s face it: Most of us lie every day. A famous study by a psychologist at the University of Massachusetts found that “60 percent of people lied at least once during a 10-minute conversation and told an average of two to three lies.”

Most of us are not very good at spotting a lie. And science so far hasn’t done much better. Polygraph machines (popularly referred to as lie detectors) aren’t reliable enough to be used in most courts. And while brain researchers keep trying to unravel the mechanism of lying, they have come up with nothing definitive.

Even so, knowing a few things about lies and their tellers might someday help you. Here are 10 of the more popular techniques researchers and others working in law enforcement recommend when trying to spot a lie: